DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 651, 7 March 2016

Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
While some of us like to build and shape our operating systems from the ground up, most people like their computers to provide a wide range of functionality right from the start. This explains why Korora, a Fedora-based project, has been successful. Korora takes the Fedora Workstation distribution and adds various repositories, codecs and other extras that most desktop users will want. This week we kick off with a review of Korora 23 and the project's many editions. The Fedora developers have acknowledged people would like to have more functionality in their Workstation edition and, in our News section, we discuss plans the Fedora's team has for making the distribution more friendly. We also talk about steps the Linux Mint developers are taking to secure their website in the wake of an attack and we celebrate the availability of an edition of Ubuntu MATE for the Raspberry Pi 3 computer. Plus we mention Google dropping support for 32-bit builds of Chrome, a side-effect of this change and a workaround. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss using different file systems for different situations and, in our Opinion Poll, we ask which flavour of Ubuntu we should review next month. As usual, we provide a list of the torrents we are seeding and share the distributions released last week. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!

Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (12MB) and MP3 (24MB) formats

Feature Story (by Joshua Allen Holm)

Korora 23 review

Korora 23 is Fedora 23 plus some customizations and extra software installed by default. There are five different editions of Korora, each with a different desktop environment. There are ISOs for Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, MATE, and Xfce, each of which is about 2GB in size. Unlike Fedora, where GNOME is the default and the other desktop environments are classified as "spins" offering alternative desktop environments, Korora does not make any one desktop the official default.

Each of the Korora downloads can be burned to a DVD or copied to a flash drive. The media will boot to a live desktop environment the user can test out before installing it to their hard drive using the Anaconda installer. The install process should be extremely familiar to anyone who has used Fedora. During the install process, the user will be able to change language and keyboard options; set the location, date, and time; configure hard drive partitions, configure the network; set the root password; and create a single non-root account.

What sets Korora apart from its Fedora base is all the extras. The Fedora Project sticks very close to the defaults set by the upstream projects and does not ship non-free software or anything patent encumbered. Fedora users who want such things need to add extra repositories. Korora, on the other hand, includes the Adobe, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Talk plugin, RPM Fusion Free, RPM Fusion Non-free, and VirtualBox repositories, plus a repository for Korora specific packages. Several of these repositories are disabled by default, but enabling an already installed repository is far easier than having to install them, assuming the user is even aware such repositories exist.

A fresh install of any of the Korora variants comes with far more software out of the box than its Fedora equivalent. As with most distributions, the user will find the near ubiquitous Firefox and LibreOffice and various desktop environment specific utilities and applications, but Korora adds Audacity, Darktable, GIMP, HandBrake, Inkscape, OpenShot and VLC media player, plus a few other odds and ends. Just after install, Korora is ready to go for most audio/visual and graphical editing tasks, but if something is missing, Korora includes Yum Extender to install additional software. It also includes GNOME Software in the GNOME variant and Apper in the KDE variant.

Korora 23 runs a very recent version of the Linux kernel (currently version 4.3.5) so there is good hardware support for Linux-compatible hardware. If the user does have hardware that does not have open source drivers, or if the user wants to use proprietary drivers instead of the open source ones, Korora's Pharlap utility is designed to assist the user with installing drivers. Unfortunately (at least for the purposes of this review), my hardware is fully supported without needing any proprietary drivers, so I cannot attest to how well Pharlap works.

Beyond just making Fedora easier for newcomers by adding things to Fedora, Korora has done an excellent job at crafting a unique experience that separates it from the distribution it is based on. Like I stated above, Fedora sticks very close to upstream default settings, but Korora tweaks and adds things to each of the five desktop environments. With the exception of KDE (which uses its own Breeze icon set), each of the desktops uses a special Korora icon theme. This theme features matching round icons for every single application included in the default install. All the applications having stylistically similar icons creates a unified experience. Though, I am sure there are applications available in the repositories that do not have a custom icon available.

The distribution includes more tweaks unique to each desktop environment. However, the KDE desktop seems largely untouched. The KDE desktop looks nice, but unlike the other four variants, KDE looks like generic KDE instead of like Korora's own KDE. Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce each receive several tweaks to their themes. All three of those desktop environments have dark themes for their panels, which looks nice with the custom Korora icons. In Cinnamon, the panel moves from its default bottom position to the top with few other changes. MATE has a few theme and colouring changes, but still uses the familiar GNOME 2-style panel layout. Xfce uses an auto-hiding dock on the left side of the screen as one of its panels with another panel at the top of the screen. One major frustration I had with these customizations is the fact that these changes are not saved as a theme. For example, in MATE the Korora default theme is just "Custom" and selecting any other theme makes it a little hard, but not impossible, to get things back to the way the Korora developers configured it.

GNOME is my standard desktop environment, so I found the changes in Korora's GNOME edition to be the most interesting. I will start by saying that I use GNOME 3 daily with no setting changed from the default settings that come with Fedora 23, and I like it that way just fine. Still, Korora's tweaks to the default GNOME 3 desktop intrigued me. They enabled extensions to enable the GNOME 2-style Places menu; added a menu for removable media to the upper right status area; put a weather applet next to the panel clock; and changed the dash into a dock which is always visible on the desktop. Korora also has a customized GNOME Shell theme, which is nice, but is not different enough to make that much of a difference. I found all of the changes to be nice, usable, and useful, but none of them is going to be something I miss when I go back to using my standard GNOME 3 desktop.

There are a few other tweaks that extend to all five variants, but none are as major as a the Korora icon set. By default, the desktop wallpaper rotates among a selection of images. The wallpapers are nice, but nothing super special. On the command line, the Korora developers have changed the bash prompt so that is prints the current time, the username, and the current working directory. Again, nice but not anything really super helpful. Having a time stamp in the terminal might be helpful for some, but I found it a little distracting.

Performance wise, nothing the Korora developers did had any impact on the distribution's performance (positive or negative) when compared to Fedora Workstation or Fedora's alternative desktop spins. I ran Korora's Cinnamon, KDE, MATE, and Xfce variants in VirtualBox virtual machines and as live distributions from a flash drive where they were very responsive. I did a bare-metal install of Korora 23 GNOME and it worked just as well as Fedora 23 Workstation does on the same machine.

Korora is a good effort to create a Fedora-based distribution that extends Fedora and also develops its own unique identity. Each of the five variants had something to offer, and I would gladly recommend any of them to users searching for a way to use Fedora without having to deal with manually setting up RPM Fusion's repositories. Having extra software on the install media is also helpful. More applications installed by default means that users can get started using their computers right after the operating system is installed. However, I have mixed feelings on Korora's various customizations. Some, like the consistent icon theme, are nice, but others (e.g. the customized bash prompt) do not really work for me. Heavy emphasis on "for me." That is not to say they are bad. I can see how other users might find the customization I do not like to be extremely helpful. So, if you are looking for a beginner friendly, Red Hat-style Linux, give Korora a try (or five) and see if one of its variants meets your needs.

* * * * *

Hardware used in this review

My physical test equipment for this review was an Acer TravelMate X483 laptop with the following specifications:

Last month, the Linux Mintwebsite was compromised and, when the Mint developers learned of the attack, they took most of their website and forums off-line to deal with the issue. In the project's monthly newsletter, Clement Lefebvre addressed the attack and the steps the project has taken to improve security. "To protect you and reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, almost all websites moved to HTTPS so you're guaranteed you're looking at the real Linux Mint server and the communication between you and us is encrypted. These measures protect you against local attacks (somebody listening to your local network, somebody maliciously opening up free wi-fi to capture passwords being typed in a public place or, even on a greater scale, fake DNS resolution pointing you to malicious servers). Note: The blog is yet to switch to HTTPS, we're working on that still. To make ISO verification more accurate we'll communicate SHA256 sums and GPG information more prominently going forward. MD5 was displayed as the primary mean of verification, with SHA256 and GPG being available for people who wanted them. We'll review the way this information is shown and try to make more people use SHA256 and hopefully also GPG by default." Further details and plans for future improvements are listed in the newsletter.

* * * * *

The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently launched a new model of their small, single-board computer. Last week the Ubuntu MATE project announced they have already published an edition of their distribution which is compatible with the new Raspberry Pi 3 computers. "The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is here and we are delighted to announce the immediate availability of Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B! Many thanks to Ben Nuttall, Simon West, Liz Upton and Phil Elwell from the Raspberry Pi Foundation for providing Martin Wimpress with a Raspberry Pi 3 and engineering assistance over the weekend. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, the RAM remains 1GB and the USB and wired Ethernet port arrangement and configuration are unchanged." While Ubuntu MATE's Bluetooth support for the new Pi is still in development, all other features are expected to work. Further details on the Pi's new hardware and the new edition of Ubuntu MATE can be found in the project's announcement.

* * * * *

PCWorld has run an article which talks about recent changes to the Fedora distribution and future plans to make Fedora a more friendly desktop operating system. In the article, Fedora's Project Leader, Matthew Miller, weighs in on what changes are coming to the distribution: "If developers want to play games on their laptops, there's a good chance they'll need closed-source graphics drivers like those from NVIDIA or AMD. Fedora has never officially supported these drivers due to its focus on free software, and has no plans to do so. However, the Fedora project would like to make the process of installing them less painful, and there will be a big conversation about that in the next year. `If you need to have those graphics drivers and you're a grown-up, you can make that decision yourself,' said Miller. Fedora's new attitude will extend to patent-encumbered codecs for playing various types of media and closed-source software, too. As Miller tells it, Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers on Fedora, despite the fact that users have to get it directly from Google. Miller believes Fedora is actually losing an educational opportunity here. If users would search for Chrome in Fedora's Software application and see instructions for downloading Chrome and an informational message about why it's not free software, Fedora would be able to educate its users and help them find what they're looking for." Additional information on Fedora's adoption of Wayland and how the project plans to make contributing easier can be found in the PCWorld article.

* * * * *

Last week Google dropped support for the 32-bit version of its Chrome web browser on all flavours of Linux. This planned obsolescence had been in the works for a while, with Google recommending people who are using 32-bit operating systems either upgrade to a 64-bit platform or switch to using the open source Chromium web browser. One side-effect of 32-bit builds of Chrome being dropped was that many people who were already running the 64-bit build of Chrome on 64-bit operating systems could no longer receive updated versions of the web browser. Users running Debian, or children of the Debian distribution, saw the error message "Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-i386/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)" when checking for software updates. The Pinguy OS developers have addressed the issue and provided a workaround.

As an update to the advice provided by Pinguy OS, we would like to add that the official google-chrome.list file can be over-written and the changes are lost when performing this workaround on Debian (and possibly related distributions such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint). This means the above fix gets lost and the Chrome web browser will not receive security updates. It is our suggestion that the line in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list be edited to include a leading "#" character to look like this:

# deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main

Then create a new repository file as follows:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chrome.list

In this file, insert a single line:

deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main

Then save the file. This new repository file has a different name and will not be over-written with the old repository data. This should provide a more permanent fix.

Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith)

Trying different file systems

Exploring-alternative-file-systems asks: Is there a benefit to using alternative file systems in different use cases? As an example, does it make sense to use a different file system for a laptop versus a desktop?

DistroWatch answers: There are some situations where using an alternative file system makes sense. In situations where we have a vast amount of data and need a high degree of reliability it makes sense to use ZFS. If we need to store data on a file system that can be read by virtually every operating system then we might want to use FAT. When we need file system snapshots or boot environments we will almost certainly end up using Btrfs or ZFS.

For most people at home the above requirements are unusual and, when looking at desktop vs laptop situations, there are no significant gains to be made by using an exotic file system. In most situations it is best to stick with your operating system's default file system, which usually means ext4 on Linux and UFS on members of the BSD family. These are the file systems that tend to have the most users, which means bugs are likely to be noticed and repaired quickly. Other file systems might offer slight advantages in performance or other benchmarks, but I recommend sticking with file systems that have been around for a long time and which have proven themselves reliable when in use by millions of people.

In short, unless you have a pressing need to use one file system over another, I recommend sticking with the default. For most people at home there is not a strong incentive to use different file systems on different computers.

Bittorrent is a great way to transfer large files, particularly open source operating system images, from one place to another. Most bittorrent clients recover from dropped connections automatically, check the integrity of files and can re-download corrupted bits of data without starting a download over from scratch. These characteristics make bittorrent well suited for distributing open source operating systems, particularly to regions where Internet connections are slow or unstable.

Many Linux and BSD projects offer bittorrent as a download option, partly for the reasons listed above and partly because bittorrent's peer-to-peer nature takes some of the strain off the project's servers. However, some projects do not offer bittorrent as a download option. There can be several reasons for excluding bittorrent as an option. Some projects do not have enough time or volunteers, some may be restricted by their web host provider's terms of service. Whatever the reason, the lack of a bittorrent option puts more strain on a distribution's bandwidth and may prevent some people from downloading their preferred open source operating system.

With this in mind, DistroWatch plans to give back to the open source community by hosting and seeding bittorrent files. For now, we are hosting a small number of distribution torrents, listed below. The list of torrents offered will be updated each week and we invite readers to e-mail us with suggestions as to which distributions we should be hosting. When you message us, please place the word "Torrent" in the subject line, make sure to include a link to the ISO file you want us to seed. To help us maintain and grow this free service, please consider making a donation.

The table below provides a list of torrents we currently host. If you do not currently have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.

Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.

Tomasz Jokiel has announced the release of Porteus Kiosk 3.7.0, a new update of the single-purpose Gentoo-based distribution designed for web kiosks: "I'm pleased to announce that Porteus Kiosk 3.7.0 is now available for download. New version sums all the development which happened in the last 3 months and which can be tracked with details in the changelog to the Porteus Kiosk 'automatic updates' service. Linux kernel has been updated to version 4.4.3, Mozilla Firefox to version 38.6.1 ESR and Google Chrome to version 47.0.2526.111. Packages from the userland are upgraded to portage snapshot tagged on 2016-02-28. We have moved early to the kernel 4.4.x LTS line as we need better support for PCs powered by the Intel Skylake processors. Please note that kernel and userland packages are compiled for i586 architecture, that means Porteus Kiosk does not support i486 CPUs anymore." See the release announcement and changelog for an overview of the most notable features introduced in this release.

Christian Hewitt has announced the release of OpenELEC 6.0.2, the latest stable version of the specialist distribution featuring Kodi, an open-source media entertainment software: "The OpenELEC 6.0.2 release has been published. Users running OpenELEC 5.95.1 thru 6.0.1 with auto-update enabled will be prompted on-screen to reboot and apply the update once it has been downloaded. Users running older OpenELEC releases or with auto-update disabled will need to manually update. If you would like to update from an older OpenELEC release please read update instructions/advice on the wiki before updating. Manual update files can be obtained from the downloads page. OpenELEC 6.0.2 is a maintenance release but has some new features backported from our upcoming OpenELEC 7.0 release. The main fixes are: full RaspberryPi 3 support including onboard WLAN and Bluetooth; fixes to our settings add-on, including fixes for backup and restore; add more USB-WLAN drivers to WeTek Play and WeTek OpenELEC box builds...." Continue to the release announcement for more information.

Neofytos Kolokotronis has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2016.02 (code name "ian"), the latest stable version of the KDE-centric distribution originally forked from Arch Linux: "We are happy to announce the release of Chakra's first 2016 ISO image, codenamed 'Ian', in memory of the late Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian. This ISO image doesn't introduce any major changes, but it offers an updated snapshot of our stable repositories to new users. It can be considered a maintenance release, providing all the bug fixes and package updates that occurred in the last three months, ever since the previous ISO image was released. As always, we ship the latest available versions of KDE's Plasma, Applications and Frameworks. The 2016.02 'Ian' ISO image ships with the following notable packages: KDE Plasma 5.5.4, KDE Frameworks 5.19.0 KDE Applications 15.12.2, Calligra 2.9.11, Linux kernel 4.2.6, X.Org Server 1.17.4, systemd 228, Qt 5.5.1, MESA 11.0.6, NVIDIA 358.16, Catalyst 15.9...." Read the release announcement for more details and a screenshot.

Untangle has announced the release of Untangle NG Firewall 12.0, a major new update of the specialist distribution designed for firewalls and gateways. This is the project's first version based on Debian 8.0: "12.0 is a major release. Major user interface updates, a new dashboard and many new features. The admin interface received a major overhaul. The organization didn't change much so there isn't a big learning curve to re-learn everything. However, visually it is very different. The new admin interface is simpler, cleaner, faster and more responsive. The two tabs (apps, config) on the left are gone. Now there are 4 global tabs. The dashboard is a new customizable view into your system and important topical information. By default the dashboard shows an assortment of 'widgets' which show you different information about your system. You can also add more widgets to show various information. Apps shows the new apps view. By default and on upgrade this is the traditional rack view." Here is the standard press release while useful technical details are more readily available in the release notes.

Josh Strobl has announced the release of Solus 1.1, an update to the project's inaugural stable release delivered in December. Solus is a simple desktop Linux distribution featuring a home-made desktop environment (Budgie) and a custom package manager (eopkg). This minor point release brings improvements to the Budgie desktop, streamlined system installer and updated software packages: "We are proud to announce the release of Solus 1.1, the first point release in the 'Shannon' series of releases. Solus 1.1 builds upon the groundwork of 1.0 with subtle refinements and improvements to Budgie, large core and graphics stack improvements, and furthers us on our journey to create something that you can just use, something that just works. Budgie is our flagship desktop environment, developed and designed for the desktop, with every inch of it catering to a desktop workflow. We have continued to improve Budgie, with version 10.2.4 shipping in Solus 1.1. This release features a multitude of bug fixes, improvements and updated translations." Here is the full release announcement with screenshots.

Next month we will see the release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. As Ubuntu is widely used and the distribution functions as a base for many other projects, we naturally plan to review the new release. There are many community editions of Ubuntu and we are considering which of the community editions we might also review.

This week we want to know which, if any, of Ubuntu's community editions you would like to see DistroWatch review next month.

You can see the results of our previous poll on learning resources here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.

Whonix is an operating system focused on anonymity, privacy and security. It is based on the Tor anonymity network, Debian GNU/Linux and security by isolation. Whonix consists of two parts: One solely runs Tor and acts as a gateway, which is called Whonix-Gateway. The other, which is called Whonix-Workstation, is on a completely isolated network. Only connections through Tor are possible. With Whonix, you can use applications and run servers anonymously over the Internet. DNS leaks are impossible, and not even malware with root privileges can find out the user's real IP.

Securepoint Security Solutions offers a full-featured suite of firewall tools designed for enterprisewide deployment. Not only can it protect an internal network from outside attacks, it also helps segregate parts of your internal network and define custom protection rules for each. Securepoint lets you create and manage VPN tunnels for remote users and define traffic filters, reports, and alerts for your entire network. Securepoint Freeware is a very secure and free firewall solution for protecting your Internet gateway. Securepoint can as well be used with existing firewalls and to protect interconnected locations or divisions.